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Churchill Downs' Collmus calls 'em but can't recall 'em

Larry Collmus looked through his binoculars and saw mostly mud. On the first Saturday of May 2013, a splattered colt was charging through the slop at Churchill Downs, gaining ground with each stride but leaving its jockey's helmet and silks nearly smudged beyond recognition. Calling the Kentucky Derby for NBC and for posterity, Collmus was compelled to make an educated guess.

On the first Saturday of May 2013, a splattered colt was charging through the slop at Churchill Downs, gaining ground with each stride but leaving its jockey's helmet and silks nearly smudged beyond recognition. Calling the Kentucky Derby for NBC and for posterity, Collmus was compelled to make an educated guess.

He caught a glimpse of red and white, and then a name caught in his throat for a long, guttural growl: "ORRRRRRRRB," he announced, "is coming with giant strides in the center of the track."

Collmus says he was about 80 percent sure of Orb's identity in the early stages of his stretch run, which left him about 20 percent terrified. On a clear day, with a field of as many as 20 horses, calling the Kentucky Derby can be the most treacherous two minutes in sports. In the mud, it is madness.

Having called three Derbys for NBC without a major mishap, Churchill Downs' new track announcer is uniquely qualified for a position that jockey agent Jerry Hissam calls the "toughest job at the track." Now in his 29th year calling races, the Baltimore-bred 47-year-old carries a voice of authority and clarity and is a master of selective short-term memory.

Collmus confessed that he had to look up his sister's phone number to provide the track with an emergency contact, and he said he has no special talent for remembering song lyrics, but his ability to match silks with steeds on short notice — race after race after race — is a knack that fills a narrow and necessary niche in thoroughbred racing.

"I tell people that you train yourself over the years to get better at this job," he said Thursday. "People say, 'How do you do that?' And the answer is, 'I have no idea.' ...

"It's just the job. It's just what I do — call these races and memorize all these horses. As far as is there is a secret to it, if there is, I don't know what it is."

Following a formal news conference, Collmus consented to take a short-term memory test developed at the University of Washington. He correctly identified 36 of 42 letters that appeared briefly on a computer screen in six progressively longer steps. Churchill Downs executives Darren Rogers and John Asher, gallant guinea pigs both, scored 35 and 31, respectively.

Motivational speaker Chester Santos, who sells his services as the "International Man of Memory," says an average person could duplicate Collmus' command of horses with three or four weeks of practice. Having memorized the winning horse, jockey and time of every Kentucky Derby, Santos speaks from equine experience.

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Churchill Downs announced it's new announcer, Larry Collmus.(Photo: Aaron Borton, Special to the C-J)

"Your memory is very trainable," he said Thursday. "Researchers were absolutely blown away by the memory of New York City cab drivers."

Like many other track announcers, Collmus has experimented with color-coded charts as a visual aid, but he eventually abandoned the practice to rely on rote memory. He starts studying potential Derby horses in the February prep races — "I want those horses that are running in the Kentucky Derby to be my best friends by the time they come to the racetrack," he said — and reviews the colors of each contender "several times a day."

On the eve of a race day, or that morning, Collmus practices pronouncing the names of the horses, jockeys and trainers. And as soon as one race ends, he will start forgetting its contestants to make room in his memory bank for the next race.

"People say, 'You should write a book about your life,' " he said. "I can't. I can't remember anything. ... It's hard to remember long-term things because of the abuse of short-term memory."

Collmus is able to recall that he first called races in 1985, during the last season of Bowie Race Track in Maryland. His first shot behind the microphone was the first race on June 5, a claiming race won by an otherwise forgettable Florida-bred called Tiara's Flame. He was 18 years old.

"I was as nervous calling that race as I was calling my first Kentucky Derby," he said. "I got through it and I remember my binoculars shaking. When I called my first Kentucky Derby, my binoculars weren't shaking — my legs were. I felt like I was going to fall down."

When the 2011 Derby was over, and Collmus had correctly identified Animal Kingdom crossing the finish line first, he asked an NBC production assistant if he had made any mistakes. When told his call had been clean, Collmus said he felt as if a 1,000-pound weight had been lifted from him.

"The pressure was off," he said. "And I'm not afraid to say this: I cried."